contact with its complexities Patrick's politics take on a new gravity,
thoughtfulness, and intellectual character.

Under the influence of these associations and the ideas pervading them
our typical Irish farmer gets drawn out of his agricultural sleep of the
ages, developing rapidly as mummy-wheat brought out of the tomb and
exposed to the eternal forces which stimulate and bring to life. I have
taken an individual as a type, and described the original circumstance
and illustrated the playing of the new forces on his mind. It is the
only way we can create a social order which will fit our character as
the glove fits the hand. Reasoning solely from abstract principles about
justice, democracy, the rights of man and the like, often leads us into
futilities, if not into dangerous political experiments. We have to see
our typical citizen in clear light, realize his deficiencies, ignorance,
and incapacity, and his possibilities of development, before we can
wisely enlarge his boundaries. The centre of the citizen is the home.
His circumference ought to be the nation. The vast majority of Irish
citizens rarely depart from their centre, or establish those vital
relations with their circumference which alone entitle them to the
privileges of citizenship, and enable them to act with political wisdom.
An emotional relationship is not enough. Our poets sang of a united
Ireland, but the unity they sang of was only a metaphor. It mainly
meant separation from another country. In that imaginary unity men were
really separate from each other. Individualism, fanatically centering
itself on its family and family interests, interfered on public boards
to do jobs in the interests of its kith and kin. The co-operative
movement connects with living links the home, the centre of Patrick's
being, to the nation, the circumference of his being. It connects him
with the nation through membership of a national movement, not for the
political purposes which call on him for a vote once every few years,